The present invention relates to a method of simulating shaping a textile strip by winding it on a mold that presents the shape of a body of revolution, the textile strip being made by three-dimensional weaving between a plurality of warp yarn layers and a plurality of weft yarn layers, the warp yarn layers being interlinked by the weft yarns.
The invention finds a particular but non-exclusive application in predicting the registering faults that occur while a textile strip is being shaped by winding in order to form a fiber preform for a composite material part such as an aeroengine casing, e.g. a fan casing. Once the fiber preform has been shaped in this way, it is impregnated with a resin that is subsequently polymerized in order to form a body of revolution made out of organic matrix composite material.
At the end of weaving, the warp yarns, which are oriented in the winding direction, and the weft yarns of the textile strip are mutually orthogonal. In contrast, while the textile strip is being wound on the mold in the form of a body of revolution, registering faults appear in the strip. The term “registering fault” is used herein to mean any angle between a warp yarn and a weft yarn that differs from 90°, the initial angle of weaving between the warp yarns and the weft yarns. These registering faults vary with the portion of the texture under consideration. When they become excessive, registering faults can degrade the mechanical strength properties of the part, e.g. by locally creating blocks of matrix without fibers, or conversely by creating zones having fibers at too great a concentration, thereby preventing good penetration of the resin.
It is therefore desirable to be able to simulate the shaping of a textile strip on a mold in the form of a body of revolution in order to evaluate the influence of the shaping on the orientation of the warp yarns and of the weft yarns in the strip, and in particular in order to evaluate the magnitude of any registering faults that might appear between the yarns.